Guild Wars 2

The server linking (lumping smaller population servers along with larger servers) in WVW has caused a lot of long time players to simply leave the game. I was a solo player for a long time then was adopted by one of the major guilds on my server. The camaraderie, teamwork, and social culture of our server was one of the most endearing things for me, especially when in teamspeak I could actually identify other players by the sound of their voices and finally hear the folks I’d been tagging along after for months.

After the server linking:
1) our 20-30 player squads couldn’t compete against the 50+ zergs of the bigger servers.
2) we could no longer use voice chat as effectively since different servers have different TS sites and the logistics of joining or adding folks to your server who may in a few weeks then be on opposite teams is problematic and seems not to have been thought out carefully by ArenaNet. Additionally, the sheer numbers of other players and the brief window that we are linked makes it challenging to know who everyone is before it’s time to switch links again. Sure getting to know every other WVW player in the world sounds like a good thing but in practice you lose the intimacy and team bonding that come with working in smaller groups on one’s one server.
3) Because of these and other issues WVW just wasn’t as fun or rewarding as it had been and essentially caused most of the leaders and members of my old Guild to simply leave the game.

I’m hearing that ArenaNet has posted numbers supporting the server linking claiming that it has increased the number of players. I think it it is more likely that those players were going to join in any case and if there was any growth it was unrelated to the server linking. I know for a fact that many people have left because of it. Finally I think the biggest mistake that any company can make is simply going after numbers rather then focusing on the quality of the product. The folks who think the megablob game style is preferable have probably never experienced the small-server camaraderie that my server had before linking – so can’t make an informed choice about which works best.
One option? how about server linking on a quarterly basis, as a special event?
ie: unlinked servers 75% of the time then mega matchups once at the beginning of each quarter? wouldn’t that give everyone the best of both worlds?

(Sorry but I’m an Engi I’m always trying to fix things XD)

thanks for listening – see you on the battlefield.
- Copernackus.